Pretty good machine - Can't play games?

X

xprovoke

n00b
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
5
I have a pretty decent machine that I have had for like 2 years now I guess and for some reason I can't play any decent games on it. For example, I put Quake 4 and Prey on the lowest quality settings and the lowest resolution and it's still laggy. Here are my stats for my machine. I have not run any tests on the hardware really to tell if something is corrupt, but Windows runs fine, I just can't play crap for games. Is my machine just not good enough or do I need to upgrade something?

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Most likely, all you need is a graphics card upgrade... though, if you could afford it, you may also want to get one of the newer E7- or E8-series dual cores.

At your current display resolution, the HD4850 would give you the best-bang-for-your-buck performance, though you may want to look at the 9800GTX/GTX+ if you want to keep SLI as an available option (... but you don't really need that option...).
 
somethings gotta be wrong you shouldn't see lag @ those settings on those games.....

Although ^^ is right a GPU upgrade is due and a CPU upgrade is due soon, you could OC around 3.0Ghz and delay a CPU upgrade for awhile..... you should look at an 8800GT for a GPU.
 
I believe the PSU is an Ultra X-Finity 500 or 600w. I don't see why there is lag when I turn Quake 4 down to lowest quality at 640x480 and the lag is still so bad that I can't even play it. The only thing that I can think of that is anywhere wrong with my machine is I have a 76GB Raptor and it clicks pretty loud when it is working. I don't know if that is normal. Regardless of needing a GPU update, I still doubt I need to upgrade from a 7950 512MB to not lag at the lowest quality setting for 640x480. Any other ideas?
 
Clicks or ticks? Clicks = bad. Ticks = normal seek noise.

OC your CPU to 3Ghz and see if your framerates improve at 640x480 res.

You may also want to try updated drivers. Clean your old drivers off with Driver Cleaner Pro.
 
Also do you have any apps running in the background like an anti-virus or something?
 
I had a similar spec box to that with the 6400 CPU and a 7600GT and I ran Quake4 and Prey on it fine. You're not running out of CPU. Gotta be some software thing, HDD dying, or drive out of space? The only time I hear my raptor chug is when I have two programs trying to do a ton of I/O simultaneously, so perhaps you have a rogue app (*cough*virus*cough*) trying to fight the game for system resources.
 
I know it is weird. My hard drive chugs and clicks and rapidly clicks all the time. Maybe there is something wrong with it, or maybe not. I use AVG and that barely runs in the backgroudn. My ram is steady at 25% and my CPU gets up to 50% during gameplay so I don't think that is it. I just don't think the raptor can cause lag during gameplay like that. I dunno man, if anyone has any ideas about what it could be... i don't want to start swapping pieces when everything in my machine is pretty updated. Someone let me know what the deal is with this shit!
 
Scan for viruses and run a hard drive diagnostic.

it sounds like a hard drive or other issue because your rig should be able to run those games no problem
 
I'm going to test the hard drive by installing XP on a different drive and installing the games and seeing if they lag at all and go from there. I will update when I find out if that was the cause.
 
Maybe get the newest beta drivers for your card off nVidia website? see if that helps.
 
Could XP64 have anything to do with it?
I can play those games fine with my old old computer in my sig.
 
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